


Forty-Three Seconds

by LunaCatriona



Series: The Abandoned Parties [3]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 17:12:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16999170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaCatriona/pseuds/LunaCatriona
Summary: "She sat down on a bench and crossed her legs, and started to count.Forty-three seconds.He appeared in front of her in forty-three seconds."Nicola and Malcolm decide to abandon another party.





	Forty-Three Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> Since Tereshkova nagged me last night...

Her daily – sometimes hourly – bollockings aside, she attempted to stay completely out of his way after New Year. Not because she didn’t want to be near him, but because she had experienced everything he was that night. Even worse was that she had discovered she liked it. She could not recall the way his fingers trailed up her skin, barely there and yet unmistakeable, without her breath catching. Not particularly convenient when it was something she recalled every time he gestured wildly in temper with his hands, or pointed at her with an accusation of stupidity.

He, on the other hand, had made no effort not to cross her path. Indeed, even her team (if they ever could be called such a productive thing) had commented on the sheer number of visits he made to DoSAC, and the explosive arguments they ended in. That was partly her fault; she had somehow gained a way in, and it infuriated him beyond belief. She was not at all proud to say that there were occasions she had deliberately got under his skin.

It was at the end of January that a government party had been arranged, for which everyone had been instructed to be on their best behaviour. That, of course, meant that the Health Secretary had already made several inappropriate comments to several highly intelligent women, the Foreign Secretary had slipped up and said to a journalist that he despised the European Union, and the Prime Minister himself was in the middle of demonstrating why one should never mix Prozac with alcohol in public – his tongue was looser than the Education Secretary’s knickers, and they were only on to keep her ankles warm.

When choosing a dress, she was embarrassed to find she had chosen what she knew would drive him mad. A pale shade of lilac, it didn’t reach her knees. It did, however, leave a fair chunk of her chest bare. Her husband was nowhere to be found – he hadn’t returned from work that night, which wasn’t all that unusual. He was probably getting pissed, high or shagged, or quite likely all three. She couldn’t find a fuck to give anymore.

Needing a break from the incessant small talk with colleagues who made her nervous at best and creeped-out at worst, she stood against the wall with a glass in her hand and her toe to the floor as one leg crossed the other. She watched him. It didn’t take long.

“If there was any fucking less of that dress, you’d be standing there in yer scants,” he said to her. “Not leaving much to the imagination, are you?”

She smiled up at him. “Best behaviour, remember?”

He scowled at her. “You’re encouraging bad behaviour, not fucking good behaviour.”

“I think you’ll find, Malcolm, _you_ are the one in charge of your cock, not me,” she smirked, standing up straight and closing the distance between them. “I’m not pulling it about like an eighties’ joystick, you know.”

The look on his face was fucking priceless. She wished she’d thought to have a camera ready. Amused and distracted as she was by his expression, she partially missed her mouth with her glass while trying to drain it, causing white wine to drip off her collar bone and down her chest. She brushed it off her breast with her fingers and when she looked back up at him, he looked like he wanted to take her right there and then.

She walked away from him, perfectly aware of the view she was giving him of her arse as her heels clicked resolutely on the hard floor.

She picked up another wine glass and left the room, heading out of the building confident in the knowledge he was going to follow her. The air was cold, and an unwelcome reminder of just how fucking thin this dress was. It seemed she was risking hypothermia just to wind a man up. She sat down on a bench and crossed her legs, and started to count.

Forty-three seconds.

He appeared in front of her in forty-three seconds. His eyes were furious, just as they had been every time he had ripped her to shreds in the month of January. That fury was burning through her as his eyes took in every inch of her. “You,” he growled, “are just plain fucking cruel.”

“Funny,” she smirked, “most of Whitehall would say the same about you.”

“Maybe, but I’m fucking honest about it. You do it by sitting there with half your chest hanging out and your fucking arse barely covered, and those big fucking ‘come and fuck me’ eyes,” he retorted. “Knowing I can’t fucking do anything of the sort.”

She smiled at him innocently. “I’m quite sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He sat down next to her and whispered into her ear, “I’m quite sure you fucking do know what I’m talking about.” His fingers brushed across her thigh, and she could not prevent herself from inhaling sharply. She instantly regretted it when the frozen air went straight to her chest, causing a cold burning as she breathed. “And you’ve got no face for poker.”

She turned to face him. “Have you seen your face lately?” she laughed. “Christ, you couldn’t have made it more obvious if you tried this morning.” He scowled at her, and so she elaborated. “When you charged into my office this morning, effing and blinding about the Daily Mail printing ‘even if Mrs. Murray’s speeches enlighten us to nothing at all, at least her wardrobe choices let us enjoy the view while she says nothing in particular’,” she quoted the article he had raged about, “you were virtually on fucking top of me.”

“Aye, well, that’s because your dress when you made that speech was so low cut I’m surprised we couldn’t see your fucking belly button!” he replied. “Who approved that fucking monstrosity, anyway?”

“I did,” she said sharply. “Or don’t I get a say in what I use to cover my body anymore?”

“You use the word ‘cover’ very fucking loosely there.”

“Meanwhile,” she continued pointedly, “you and your men can feel free to wear trousers that practically asphyxiate your balls on a daily basis.”

“I don’t wear-”

“Perhaps not, but nobody would say a thing if you did.”

He raised his eyebrows at her, and she thought she knew why: she did not normally express herself so freely – at least not to him. “Opinionated tonight, aren’t ya?”

She let out a snigger and got up. It was too cold to sit here arguing about the finer points of sexism in dress codes with him. But he followed her, back into the middle of the party, where they could do nothing untoward. That did not stop him pushing their luck. He quietly guided her into a secluded corner, behind the white screen being used for a projector. “I didn’t say I don’t like the dress,” he smirked. His hand fell onto her hip and, as much as she would have liked to leave it there, she smacked it away.

“Malcolm!” she growled. “The fucking Prime Minister’s out there!”

“Tom?!” laughed Malcolm. “I don’t think he knows what fucking year it is. Doubt he’d fucking notice two people hidden behind a screen.”

“Not to mention members of the press,” she added, “and the _entire fucking Cabinet_.”

He leaned in and kissed her. It was no use. She couldn’t help but kiss him back, hard and furious. It was only when a low moan tumbled from her lips that she desisted and looked around her, terrified someone might have heard her. She peeked out to find that everyone was distracted by their own conversations, and by the Prime Minister’s fucking stupidity – the stupidity Malcolm was supposed to be limiting, and that was only permitted to happen because he was trying to get his fucking leg over. “You’re meant to be out there shutting him up,” she hissed at him.

Poking his head around the corner, he said quietly, “Ah, he’s a fucking lost cause. He doesn’t actually know anything that could get him in trouble, anyway. We’ve kept him out the loop all week because we knew he’d get fucking plastered.”

She shook her head and walked away from him, back out into the open. She was horribly aware that her lips were hot and swollen from their rough, passionate kiss; it was only a sense of duty that prevented her from going back there and repeating the sin. She had told herself over and over, all month, that she would not do it again, that she would never allow herself to be seduced by him again. And yet, hadn’t _she_ gone out of her way to seduce _him_ tonight? When it really came down to it, she didn’t want New Year to be a one-off thing. She had enjoyed it too much.

The problem was that she now knew what he was capable of. She knew how his fingers felt against her skin, and how his teeth felt against her collar bone, and how his body felt against hers. It was very fucking problematic that she wanted that body atop hers once more.

She turned and stared in his direction. His eyes met her hers, across a room filled with people who were simply not important.

He strode past her to the Prime Minister, and quietly said something in his ear. Her heartbeat quickened – was he telling the Prime Minister they’d been kissing behind that screen, or that they’d fucked at New Year? When he strode past her in the opposite direction, he didn’t tell her, but shot her a smug look. A few minutes later, he returned wearing his coat and held hers out for her to put her arms into. She frowned at him, silently asking what the hell he was playing at. “We both had the same dodgy sandwich at lunch while I bollocked you for your poor wardrobe choices,” he smirked.

With a disbelieving shake of her head, she let him help her into her coat and lead her from the building.

In less that three minutes, they were in a cab bound for his home. She was abandoning a party to go to his place. A-fucking-gain.

His hand trailed lightly up her leg. When she allowed herself to look at him, his face was triumphant. There was no point fighting what she didn’t particularly wish to fight. So she closed the distance between them and kissed him ferociously, intending to leave him in no doubt that he had somewhat pissed her off and would suffer the consequences in due course. She felt his hand in her hair, knotted in the frizzy mess she had long since given up on taming. “You’re a complete fucking cunt, Malcolm Tucker,” she breathed between harsh kisses.

“You started it,” he grinned.

That was an accusation that, on reflection, she could not really deny. There were several things she had done to antagonise him tonight. She just hadn’t dared to hope they might be _this_ effective. She could feel his hand making steady progress up her thigh, and couldn’t help but feel both smug and frustrated that any further progress would soon be halted by her tights.

She heard the buzz of her phone ringing. Fumbling around in her bag, she could feel the beginnings of panic creep through her. However, when she saw the screen, she found it wasn’t any of her children or the babysitter – it was her husband, who had declined an invitation to the gathering on the excuse that he had to work late.

She almost answered it. Almost.

It was a split-second decision to send her husband to voicemail and get out of that taxi, to go home with someone else. Her phone rang again. She ignored it and kicked the front door with her heel, slamming it shut with a bang.

The bag ended up abandoned at the front door. As she left for the bedroom, she heard the continued vibrations of her phone, telling her that her husband wanted hold of her. The guilt she knew she ought to have felt was deafeningly absent. She was here with someone complicated and interesting; whatever her husband was, he was neither of those things. That was the reason she stayed here. It was selfish, but then so was everyone else she knew. It was about time she started fitting in.


End file.
